The French list .....

Continuing our Lists theme, 25 essential French flicks we love, from the Fifties to the Seventies, again two maximum from each director ... (AND, Those French Tough Guys). 

• LA RONDE (1950) / MADAME DE … (1953) - Ophuls. Classic French cinema avec Danielle Darrieux & Co. 
• M RIPOIS (KNAVE OF HEARTS) 1954 / PLEIN SOLEIL (1959) – Rene Clement: Gerard Philipe and Alain Delon both at peak perfection in Clement's perfect films. Maurice Ronet is also terrific in SOLEIL as a very unpleasant Dickie Greenleaf ,,,,
• AND GOD CREATED WOMAN / HEAVEN FELL THAT NIGHT – as was Bardot in 1956 and 1958 in these Vadim scorchers! She WAS the female James Dean.
• LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD (1958) / LE FEU FOLLET (1963) – Malle - Malle's electrifying films still dazzle now, as does Maurice Ronet and Moreau ...
• LOLA (1961) / BAY OF ANGELS (1963) – Demy - 2 gleaming monochrome classics, as good as Demy's musicals, Anouk and Moreau at their best (Of course we love Demy's 2 pastel musicals and his 2 enchanting fairy tales as well, Demy label).
• AMELIE, OU TE TEMPS D’AIMER – Michel Drach, 1961 - not seen since at the Academy in Oxford Street London in 1964 when I was 18. Jean Sorel and a Victorian romance at moody Mont St Michel (my favourite place in France). 
• UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME - Lelouch. We just love Anouk and Trintignant and that lush score and visuals. Perfectly 1966
• LA FEMME INFIDELE / INNOCENTS WITH DIRTY HANDS (1975) – Chabrol's valentines to Stephane and Romy ... (just two from my 14 disk Chabrol set)
• UNDER THE SAND / TIME TO LEAVE – Ozon. A brace of Ozon classics. TIME TO LEAVE is harrowing, Rampling is perfect UNDER THE SAND (as was Deneuve in POTICHE).
• 400 BLOWS / HISTORY OF ADELE H. – Truffaut. Isabelle Adjani mesmerises as Adele H in 1975. and the first Antoine Doinel from 1959 is New Wave personified. 
  
• LES DRAGUEURS  - Mocky. More perfect 1959 French new wave as we take in Paris by night with Anouk and Belinda Lee.
• CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 – Agnes Varda, 1962. 
• LES VALSEUSES - Blier's shocker from 1974 still packs a punch as tearaways young Depardieu and Dewaere go on the rampage, in those flaired jeans. 
• THE BEST WAY TO WALK – Miller. Claude Miller's delicious 1976 drama
• THE WILD REEDS (LES ROSEAUX SAUVAGES)  – Techine. Andre Techine's gay classic from 1994, Gael Morel shines. 
• INDOCHINE – Wargnier - A Deneuve epic from 1992, almost a French GWTW.
  
• CESAR & ROSALIE – Sautet. Romy and Montand are perfect leads. One of Schneider's 6 with Claude Sautet, each is perfect. 
• PLAYTIME -Tati. TRAFIC is fabulous too as Monsieur Hulot goes travelling, 

12 FRENCH TOUGH GUYS:

• RIFIFI – Hossein in Dassin's 1955 masterclass
• MELODIE EN SOUS SOL – Verneuil's 1963 caper with Gabin & hot shot young Delon as they rob a Cannes casino, the playoff is perfect, 
• LE SAMOURAI – Melville's masterpiece from 1967
• LE HOMME D’ RIO – De Broca. Belmondo dazzles in Rio in 1964 with Dorleac. 
• BORSALINO – Deray. Delon and Belmondo ramp up the glamour in 1970
• THE WICKED GO TO HELL - Hossein's slick 1955 thriller with his wife Marina Vlady, and Henri Vidal.
• TOI LE VENIN -  Slick Hossein thriller from 1958, "Night is not for sleep" indeed! 
  
• UNE MANCHE ET LA BELLE (KISS FOR A KILLER) - Super Verneuil 1957 thriller with Vidal and Mylene Demongeot and Isa Miranda. 
• CHAIR DE POULE – Duvivier's jet black thriller from 1963 with Sorel and Hossein (right)
• LE CIRCLE ROUGE / ARMY OF SHADOWS – Melville's downbeat wartime epic with Signoret, Ventura & Co. 

More on all these at labels, particularly PLEIN SOLEIL, MR RIPLEY etc. 

Take 2 men - French style.

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I had never heard of the Delon and Gabin starrer TWO MEN IN TOWN (DEUX HOMME DANS LE VILLE), from 1973. It can't have even opened here or I would have heard or read about it at the time. We like their teaming in MELODIE EN SOUS SOL, that snazzy casino heist by Verneuil in 1963 with its widescreen black and white and jazzy score and that killer final scene by the pool .... both guys were the epitome of French cool (like Alain and Belmondo in BORSALINO in 1970); their 1969 THE SICILIAN CLAN is a nice caper movie too, not to be taken seriously. More on these and other French gangster flicks at labels .... Here is what they say about the two guys in town:

A hard-boiled crime drama and an impassioned indictment of capital punishment, this is the third and final on-screen collaboration between Jean Gabin, France's pre-eminent film star, and the '70s Gallic anti-hero Alain Delon.

After an early release arranged by prison reformer Gabin, ex-safe cracker Delon is devastated by personal tragedy and makes a new start in the South of France, finds honest work and a new love. But a vengeful cop begins to stalk him and his ex-gang are eyeing up the bank where his girlriend (Mimsy Farmer) works, so his determination to go straight is pushed to the breaking point. 

Written and directed by Jose Giovanni (LE TROU),  a real pardoned death row inmate, TWO MEN IN TOWN fuses the two-fisted social commentary of Warner Bros 1930s heyday with the naturalistic storytelling of 1970s French noir cinema, and has an evocative score by Phillipe Sarde.

Well that sums it up nicely, its engrossing, the two leads are fine as usual, there is also a young Gerard Depardieu, and the marvellous Michel Bouquet (LA FEMME INFIDELE, THE BRIDE WORE BLACK etc). 

Its actually part of an Alain Delon Collection on Kino Video and the extras include trailers of 10 other Delon flicks in the collection - nothing essential from what I have got already. This one though is worthwhile. Gabin of course is as effortlessly watchable as ever, as is Delon, maturing nicely here, hard to think he is over 80 now. For lots more Delon (and Gabin) check labels. 

MORE French capers .....

I did a post last week on French gangster flicks, I now find out (thanks, Daryl) that there is a retrospective season in New York until 2 August celebrating these very films. Its LES DURS featuring the work of 3 French tough guys: Jean Gabin, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Lino Ventura - with a lof of Alain Delon on show too. 

“LES DURS” is a three-week, 32-film festival spotlighting three French tough guys: Jean Gabin, Lino Ventura, and Jean-Paul Belmondo. The festival includes both classics and rarities, with many 35mm prints and DCPs imported especially for the series.

I had not even heard of TWO MEN IN TOWN (DEUX HOMMES DANS LA VILLE) from 1973 by Jose Giovanni - it had never played here- the third teaming of Gabin and Delon (after the slick Verneuil flicks MELODIE EN SOUS SOL in 1963, and the entertaining caper movie THE SICILIAN GANG in 1969). I have had to order a copy, so will be reporting on that in due course.

They are also showing a wide range of other films by the tough guys, like Belmondo's high-octane comedy thriller L'HOMME DE RIO (which we have raved about before, Belonondo label) and his Truffaut twisted romance LE SIRENE DE MISSISSIPPI (ditto) with Deneuve - her sister Francoise Dorleac is deliciously funny with Belmondo in RIO.  The delirious blurb on it says:

(1964, Philippe De Broca) A blow dart-wielding thug snatches a rare statuette from the Musée de l’Homme; anthropologist Jean Servais (Rififi) is kidnapped in broad Parisian daylight; serviceman Jean-Paul Belmondo begins his 8-day leave by changing to civvies in a Métro entrance and witnesses fiancée Françoise Dorléac (Catherine Deneuve’s sister, killed in a car accident 3 years later) getting kidnapped herself – and then the chase begins: by motorcycle, shoe leather, flight to Rio de Janeiro sans ticket or passport, airport baggage carrier, cable car, pink car complete with green stars and a rumble seat, water skies, Amazon river boat, seaplane, jungle vines…all shot in breathtaking widescreen and color. Even as Dorléac, rescued, is kidnapped again, Belmondo performs his own blood-curdling stunts against that sugar loaf Rio skyline and across that under-construction, unearthly architecture of Brasilia (even parachuting almost into the jaws of a hungry croc). Non-stop spoof of…James Bond? More like a pre-Raiders Raiders – but does Belmondo get back in time from that leave? Co-scripted by Jean-Paul Rappeneau (later director of Cyrano de Bergerac), with music by Georges Delerue (Hiroshima Mon Amour, Jules and Jim, and The Conformist). DCP restoration. Approx. 114 mins..

Full details of the films (which also include those Jean-Pierre Melville classics like LE DOULOS and ARMY OF SHADOWS and those early Gabin classics) are at the link:  and I have been meaning to watch Belmondo in De Broca's LE MAGNIFIQUE, so maybe this week ...

http://filmforum.org/series/les-durs-series

French gangster flicks

French gangster films of the Fifties and Sixties are often said to be derivative of their American film noirs, but its a genre I can return to happily many times, in the company of directors like Meville and Duvivier, and those players who sum it all up: Gabin, Delon, Belmondo, Hossein,Vidal ...

I particuarly like Henri Verneuil's 1963 MELODIE EN SOUS SOL (or THE BIG SNATCH) where old lag Jean Gabin comes out of prison with one last heist in mind, on a Cannes casino, and hires impulsive, if not reckless, young hotshot Delon to help it. Its taut, tense, the raid goes ok, and then there is that climax at the swimming pool with the bag of swag... 

The daddy of all French heist movies must be Dassin's RIFIFI in 1955, with that long central silent robbery carried out in real time (Dassin did it again, more colourfully in his 1964 TOPKAPI); one of the RIFIFI guys Robert Hossein directed a lot of tense thrillers too, superior B-movies perhaps, but try looking away from  THE WICKED GO TO HELL or  TOI, LE VENIN or UNE MANCHE ET LA BELLE. (Hossein label).   

Jean-Pierre Melville's taut, spare, acerbic thrillers like 1967's LE SAMOURAI (Delon as ice cool killer - see review, Delon label), and his exemplary ARMY OF SHADOWS in 1969 are masterworks, and we like LE CERCLE ROUGE too (Delon, Montand, Ventura) and the delightfully silly THE SICILIAN CLAN where hi-jacking an airliner in flight seems so easy, as Delon and Gabin again team and fall out while seen-it-all cop Ventura is on their trail ....  
  

We also particularly like Duvivier' CHAIR DE POULE (HIGHWAY PICKUP) that jet-black noir from 1963 with hoods Hossein and Jean Sorel (both in their 80s now and still going, as indeed are Delon and Belmondo) fall out over that robbery and a duplicitous dame. Its brilliant: as per: 
http://osullivan60.blogspot.co.uk/2011/04/fantastic-french-flick.html

Rene Clement scored here too, as with his masterwork PLEIN SOLEIL and with Delon again in LES FELINS in 1963.  Get a Delon or Belmondo or Melville boxset and enjoy. Malle's LIFT TO THE SCAFFOLD too in 1958 ... while Alain and Belmondo are great fun in BORSALINO (left) in 1970.
Below: Sorel and Hossein in CHAIR DE POULE, 1963 - and, right, in 2015.

French Can-Can

FRENCH CAN-CAN is a delicious pleasure from 1954 .... a visual delight by a major storyteller. This comedy drama from Jean Renoir chronicles the revival of Paris' most notorious dance as it tells the story of a theater producer who turns a humble washerwoman into a star at the Moulin Rouge.

Henri Danglard, proprietor of the fashionable (but bankrupt) cafe 'Le Paravent Chinois' featuring his mistress, belly dancer Lola, goes slumming in Montmarte (circa 1890) where the then-old-fashioned cancan is still danced. There, he conceives the idea of reviving the cancan as the feature of a new, more popular establishment...and meets Nini, a laundress and natural dancer, whom he hopes to star in his new show. But a tangled maze of jealousies intervenes...

Jean Gabin is in his element, Maria Felix is his fiery spitfire, and Francoise Arnoul is the new dancer she is jealous of. Edith Piaf appears too for a few moments, and sings. 1890s Paris is perfectly caught here, one imagines. The Moulin Rouge of course has fascinated movie-makers: John Huston's marvellous MOULIN ROUGE in 1953 as lensed by Oswald Morris; and Baz Luhrmann's 2001 version - theres also the 1960 film from 20th Century Fox: CAN CAN without a shred of period feel as Sinatra and McLaine go through their paces, with some energetic dance numbers. 

Renoir's version is simply wonderful, particularly that long dance sequence at the end, as Gabin dances the steps too backtage. Great movies just remain timeless. We  will have to return to Renoir's THE GOLDEN COACH from 1952 with Magnani, and finally see ELENA ET LES HOMMES with Ingrid Bergman in 1956, and his THE RIVER set in India and of course his earlier 1930s classics ...

Delon, Gabin et le Clan des Siciliens

We like a good French thriller and Henri Verneuil's THE SICLIAN CLAN is certainly a corker. It re-teams, in 1969, Alain Delon and Jean Gabin with director Verneuil, the trio had also delivered a very satisfying stylish thriller, in lush black and white widescreen, in 1963's MELODIE EN SOUS SOL, That was about robbing a casino in Cannes - this one is only hi-jacking a passenger airline carrying an expensive cargo of jewels. One laughs aloud at the audacity of it, but they carry it off .... and its astoundingly well done. Ennio Morricone's score is a perfect fit too, The film has not dated at all, and still works now with those three icons of the French thriller genre.

Hi-jacking the airplane is perhaps too easy, compared to now, and there is certainly an extra frisson now seeing the plane being diverted over New York city to where they land it on a closed highway when the gang's associates are waiting to get those jewels ...

We start with weary (as usual) Lino Ventura as police inspector Le Goff on the trail of cold-blooded murderer Sartet (Delon) who has shot two policemen. Sartet makes a daring escape from that police van with a miniture drill and is soon hidden away by the Manalese clan, who need him for their latest robbery. Headed by Gabin impassive as ever here, as Vittorio Manalese the mobster who controls his enterprises and his family with an iron hand - family includes two sons and a daughter-in-law, Irina Demick. I like the all red and white 60s apartment where they hide Delon, who feeling frustated after two year's inside, is soon cosy with a local prostitute in a shabby hotel, but of course Le Goff''s team are on his trail and he makes another daring escape.

Gabin teams up with an old associate from New York and they inspect the jewel exhbition they are interested in and its security arrangements. We think this is going to be yet another ordindary hoist - but no, the only way to get the jewels will be to intercept it on the flight to New York. This will be a major enterprise but they have the means and the know-how. Things get complicated though when Delon and Demick are caught in a compromising position by the old man's grandson .... 

After the robbery the gang disperse to various destinations, with Delon staying in New York, but is lured back to Orly airport in Paris, to collect his share of the loot, only it does not work out like that. Le Goff is also waiting, and the final showdown features Delon and Gabin with Demick in between - who, if any will survive. Its a lot more complex than this, with a large cast, and is certainly an enjoyable treat now. What though happened to 'Mr Evans' the Englishman needed on the flight, whom the gang intercept when he arrives and Delon takes his place - will the plane take off before Mrs Evans who has been trying to find him realises something is wrong and is interviewed by Le Goff and she sees that photo of Delon/Sartet on the wall? 
Verneuil is an ace hand at thrillers, with maybe not the depth of those Melville classics like LE SAMOURAI or LE FLIC or LE CERCLE ROUGE (see Thrillers/French labels for reviews). We like this one a lot and it will bear re-viewing as I want to share it with friends.
Next French: maybe Delon and Signoret in THE WIDOW COUDERC, from Simenon, in 1971. 

The cat's miouw !

LE CHAT (THE CAT), 1971. A masterclass in screen acting from two of France’s greats: Jean Gabin and Simone Signoret in this version of a Simenon novel as directed by Pierre Granier-Deferre.  Julien and Clemence are a long-married couple who now seem to detest each other and share their house without talking – he has transferred his affections to his cat. Their state of war exists as the neighbourhood around them, in suburban Paris, is pulled down and their own house is due for demolition too. Each shops for themselves as their feud escalates. Clemence worked as a circus acrobat but now has a limp, while he becomes every more grumpy and isolated. Events come to a climax with a gun – she shoots the cat, which he puts out with the rubbish! Then he moves out to stay with Annie Cordy at her hotel but he is no happier as Clemence hangs around the streets watching him. He moves back but then tragedy strikes …. 

It is an absorbing drama with both stars note-perfect, at first I thought it was shaping up to be a savage black comedy, but then it just gets sombre and grim as we reach a very downbeat ending. Granier-Deferre (who was married to Susan Hampshire in the '60s), like Claude Miller, made several absorbing dramas and entertainments without ever getting the kudos of the Truffauts. (Trintignant and Romy Schneider are both terrific in his THE LAST TRAIN, review at French label and I have his LE VEUVE COUDERC, another Simenon, with Delon and Signoret, to watch),. This one does not disappoint either. 

Melodie en sous-sol, 1963

MELODIE EN SOUS SOL is a gleaming black and white casino heist thriller which looks terrific in Scope and has that early '60s vibe to a tee. Its a variation on the old chestnut where an older guy plans a robbery, enlists a cocky young hotshot to carry it off, and then it all goes wrong. Or in this case - it all goes right, but then they lose the money in the most perfectly-judged climax, which must have sent punters out of the cinema with smiles on their faces ...

Charles (Jean Gabin), a sixtyish career criminal fresh out of jail, rejects his wife's plan for a quiet life of bourgeois respectability. He enlists a former cellmate, Francis (Alain Delon), to assist him in pulling off one final score, a carefully planned assault on the vault of a Cannes casino. Bad luck and Francis's lack of professionalism set the caper maddeningly askew, and the stolen cash resurfaces in an unexpected manner.

We like a good heist movie here at the Projector, whether classics like Huston's THE ASPHALT JUNGLE, Dassin's RIFIFI and TOPKAPI, or variations thereof like 5 AGAINST THE HOUSE, reviewed here a while back. The attraction here is the teaming of old hand Gabin, laconic as ever, and Alain Delon - here in his early '60s prime after those Clement, Antonioni and Visconti classics made him a prestige name. Director is old hand Henri Verneuil from a book called "The Big Grab", though the film was titled "The Big Snatch" on its UK release in 1964 ..... cinematography in black and white by Louis Page, musical score by Michael Magne, which is just right for that climax.

Gabin returned to his wife, Viviane Romance, from a prison stretch is plotting a final heist for his old age. He picks hothead young Delon as his help-mate to climb those ramparts and crawl along those heating ducts, and then their daring robbery as the Casino count their takings .... he also has to romance a showgirl to get access to the casino, but the females are on the periphery here. The final act is a delicious pay-off by the swimming pool .... Verneuil teamed Gabin and Delon again in THE SICILIAN CLAN in '68, and did another heist one THE BURGLARS with Belmondo & Sharif in '71, which may bear looking into. We enjoyed this one a lot though ...

L'Avventura again & another French flick

L’AVVENTURA – this Antonioni classic has been screened a few times lately here in the UK and although I have the dvd I keep been drawn back to it. It is indeed a masterwork and has caused considerable opinion ever since it opened at the Cannes Film Festival in 1960. Fascinating that at the same time as Hitchcock was filming PSYCHO Antonioni was also creating the story of a woman who vanishes and the people looking for her. Hitch shows us what happens in his masterwork, whereas Antonioni doesn’t, as we become involved in the story of Sandro and Claudia. Monica Vitti is indeed mesmerising here and it is a great performance, no wonder she became the face of arthouse cinema. It remains a very unsettling film, particularly those scenes on the remote island as we speculate on what happened to Lea Massari, and that bleak dawn at the hotel in Taormina at the end. One could say that this and PSYCHO really ushered in the new cinema age in 1960. Giovanni Fusco's score and those great black and white images are simply perfect for those characters in those landscapes prefiguring Antonioni's later films.

Another Julien Duvivier thriller, from 1956 this time: VOICI LE TEMPS DES ASSASSINS, which it was a pleasure to see last week. With most movies even if one has not seen them already one tends to know a lot about them, but these French thrillers which one knows nothing about turn out to be marvellously gripping and entertaining, like Duvivier’s CHAIR DE POULE (HIGHWAY PICKUP) I was raving about a few weeks ago.

Here we have Jean Gabin in his element as the successful restaurant owner in Les Halles, Paris, 20 years after divorcing his grasping wife, but along comes a shy young girl to tell him the ex-wife has now died leaving her, her daughter, alone and penniless. Gabin takes her in and gives her a job, but we begin to suspect the girl (Danielle Delorme) has her own agenda – and so it proves, as we see her plotting against him and planning to take over the business. Gerard Blain is Gabin’s protégé she has to get rid of first …. His aged mother though sees through her right away [and is a dab hand with her whip] so the stage is set for some tense moments, particularly when the ex-wife reappears. Nicely worked out and great to see Gabin at his considerable peak running his kitchen, coping with his fearsome mother and falling for a schemer.